Don't Call Me Your Saviour
by inkyandalbatross
Summary: They needed a saviour. So they made one.
1. Prologue: The Truth

**Don't Call Me Your Savior**

**Prologue: The Truth**

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter or Supernatural.

**Author's Notes: **This story came about with a bit of help so a first things first, a million and one thanks to ProngsPotter22 who's plot bunny really jump started this fic to life.

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><p>The Department of Mysteries was a scene of carnage. Everyone who'd come was dead whether they were students, Order members, Death Eaters or even the Dark Lord himself. Well, almost everyone.<p>

There was only one person left alive, sitting, staring out at what remained of his friends, and not understanding how he could be alive when no one else was breathing.

"Harry?"

Harry looked up from his contemplation of the weapon in his hand. It was the sword of Gryffindor. He'd taken it from one of the rooms. Somehow it was just there, and not tucked behind spelled glass in the Headmaster's office. Harry wondered vaguely if it had sensed that he needed it. He'd used the sword as a last resort, and somehow he'd killed Voldemort with it.

But only after he'd been hit by a second, mostly ineffective, Killing Curse.

He was so tired. It felt like he hadn't slept in years, and he noted detachedly that his hands were still trembling faintly in his lap.

"Harry, my boy? Can you hear me? Are you alright?"

"Professor, I—there's no one left," Harry muttered, looking back down at the blade, unable to meet Dumbledore's piercing blue gaze.

He recalled vaguely that he'd lost his wand. That it had splintered under the weight of Voldemort's fury and turning his hand over he was less surprised then he might have been to find his palm filled with sharp splinters of wood.

"I got them all killed."

"No my boy," Dumbledore said, his voice echoing hollowly around the Veil Room as he lowered himself to sit beside Harry, "No. The one who is at fault for this tragedy, this sacrifice, is I."

"Pretty sure you didn't lead everyone here chasing false visions."

"No, perhaps not this time," said Dumbledore, "But I confess that I find the timing of the whole thing serendipitous."

"What do you mean by that, sir?"

Dumbledore paused, gathering himself or so it seemed to Harry who watched him out of the corner of his eye.

"I received word just last week that it was possible now to kill Lord Voldemort. That he was as mortal as he was ever likely to be. I had thought that I would have to arrange the confrontation between you both. This was far preferable to any plan that I had as yet conjured."

That penetrated the thick fog of grief, and Harry slanted his professor a sharp-eyed look.

"And just what do you mean by that, sir?" he demanded.

"He means that we've been planning the defeat of Lord Voldemort for seventeen years now and we've finally seen our plans, our sacrifices, meet with success," cut in another voice.

At first Harry thought he was seeing a younger version of Sirius, but closer examination revealed nothing of his godfather in the cold, dead grey of the man's eyes.

"Harry, this is Regulus Black. Sirius' younger brother."

"You're meant to be dead," Harry commented.

"And is only by happy chance that I am not," Regulus admitted, "Seventeen years ago I stole something from the Dark Lord, something precious to him. The only way I could continue to walk the Earth was if I faked my death and did it well. The Headmaster helped some with that."

"What did you steal?" asked Harry, a rising foreboding nausea settling under his ribs.

"A piece of his soul. Trapped in a vessel by magics so twisted that even Dark witches and wizards name them forbidden."

"You are getting ahead of yourself Regulus, please," said Dumbledore, holding up a hand to stop Regulus' story, "I intend to start at the beginning Harry but we haven't much time before the Ministry is alerted to what occurred here tonight, so I am sorry but—"

His wand flicked out and Harry found himself unable to move, rather than just being unwilling. And it was then that Harry knew deep in his gut that something had gone, terribly, horribly wrong.

"I can't have you running off Harry. Not now that your task is done."

"What task?" hissed Harry, struggling but unable to move even an inch.

"Why to kill the Dark Lord of course," grinned Regulus without humour, "It was what you were created for, after all."

"Regulus," Dumbledore snapped a warning, "That is quite enough. Go. I will tell young Harry everything."

"Swear it."

"I hardly think that will be necessary."

"He is my god-nephew and this is me insisting."

"I will tell him everything, Regulus. On my magic I so swear. Now go, before you are seen."

"Fine, fine. As you wish it Headmaster, but I do hope you realize that my task is done with this. You won't see me again, except for when I come for you myself."

Dumbledore waved him away, dismissively. Like his life hadn't just been threatened.

"What is going on here?" Harry croaked, not sure that he wanted to know the answers.

"As Regulus said, this is the unexpected but not unwelcome conclusion to a scheme that was seventeen long years in the making. A game that not even Voldemort himself, for all his cleverness, was aware of playing."

"What did you do?"

"Patience, my boy. I will explain everything. Now, about oh, twenty years ago now, when a prophecy was spoken, telling of Voldemort's grand successes, and the massive death toll of the war I knew I needed to take steps, Harry, drastic ones the like of which I had not employed since the time of Grindelwald."

"What steps?" shouted Harry, trying to squirm and not budging from his place slumped on the stairs, "What the bloody hell did you do?"

His magic wouldn't come to bear either, not like it did when Vernon or Dudley got a little too close to doing him some serious damage.

"You have to understand, my boy. The seer foretold the end of wizardkind. Our extinction after the long years of war. Too many dead to spawn anything but weak half-bloods and perhaps the occasional exceptionally talented muggleborn, like your own Miss. Granger. And then there would come the war against the muggles. A war that was to take magic from the face of this good Earth forever. I could not let Voldemort's successful campaign come to pass. Not with that future looming over us."

Dumbledore paused, seemingly trying to organise his thoughts, and from the depths of his robes he pulled out a small tin of lemon drops and popped one into his mouth. Sucking thoughtfully.

"I consulted everyone I knew, delved into the study of the most obscure magics, light and dark, ancient and modern—it was when Regulus came to me with the trinket he'd been ordered to hide and had stolen instead that I knew what Tom Riddle had done to ensure his victories. I helped Regulus to fake his death and we set about finding these vessels, these soul-receptacles called horcruxes but it was not enough. I consulted the current Oracle at Delphi, a true daughter of Cassandra's line, and she told me that Voldemort was destined to die only by the Hand of a Sword."

"So why didn't you just stick him with Gryffindor's bloody sword your own damn self!" Harry demanded, his voice rising to echo off the walls of the chamber, "I mean you had the thrice-damned thing in your bloody office! You could have taken it and—"

Harry choked on his angry words, unable to voice them no matter how loudly he screamed. He hadn't even seen the man move his wand.

"If it had been that simple," Dumbledore continued, unperturbed by Harry's struggles and forcibly silent shouting as he moved to select another lemon drop from his tin, "I would have done it ages ago. But 'Hand of a Sword' does not, as you might expect, mean that Voldemort was to die on a blade. Rather instead I was able to divine that it meant an individual of a certain bloodline would have to step forward."

Dumbledore caught Harry's eyes to impress upon him the weight of his next statement.

"It was a bloodline, or rather, a set of bloodlines, that died out in this world long ago. I had to send agents through this very Veil behind us to find an appropriate child with only the sword to guide them. You see Harry that particular sword is the only known relic left from that time. It is ancient, and powerful in its own right. Look here I will remove the illusion I placed upon it."

He took the sword from Harry's hands and raised it up to eye level so that Harry could see it and, all of a sudden, he wasn't seeing the ruby-encrusted sword of Gryffindor but a shining silver blade more like a dagger the length of his forearm rather than what Harry thought of as being a true sword.

"The last person to wield this blade was Arthur Pendragon himself, and it is said that it was gifted to him by an angel and that before his death he gave it to the wizard Merlin to protect. You may know the legends of Excalibur. They speak of this blade, I'm certain of it, for that is how we found your parents. Or rather the parent who would pass this blood-legacy on to you, John Winchester. My agents found him and waited until he was in the company of an appropriate woman, and after that it was a simple matter of alcohol and a few minor compulsions to bring you into being, or so I was told."

Dumbledore set the sword aside and there was a soft chime, like a bell, when it touched the marble.

"Now Harry, you must know that these agents of the Order, that is Lily Evans and Jane Potter, may not have been your birth parents but they did love you. They loved you enough to sacrifice their own lives and magics so that you could wield them as your own. They loved you enough to take the sword and search you out in the world behind the Veil at great personal risk. And I honored their devotion by naming them your true parents in this world. Of course modifying all those memories to portray Jane as a wizard was rather difficult but the dear girl was so brave and true at the end. I could not deny her the legacy."

Harry couldn't think, couldn't even breath for the rage that coursed through him

"You killed them," he gasped out around the failing Silencing Charm, "You—you sacrificed them in cold blood!"

"It was necessary," Dumbledore said sharply, "It was for the greater good! Well I knew that no muggle child could stand against Voldemort. You needed that magic and those dear girls, they agreed to give it to you."

"Yeah? And what did you tell them it was for? Or did you even bother to ask?" snarled Harry, vibrating with rage.

"Of course I told them, they needed to consent for the binding ritual to work," Dumbledore said, shaking his head, "I had thought to include Sirius in their number, since he and Jane were two of my best and strongest fighters, but Sirius was not so willing to do what it took and I was forced to keep him out of the whole matter by, I admit, somewhat crueler means."

"You arranged for him to be sent to Azkaban without trial. Because Wormtail—he never betrayed anyone, did he? You just made him into a scapegoat."

"I just made him period Harry," Dumbledore said gently, patting Harry briefly on his frozen knee, "Before his transfiguration Peter Pettigrew was nothing more than your slightly less than ordinary garden rat. I had Regulus take his appearance when it became necessary to bring Voldemort back to the physical plane so that you could kill him."

"You sonofabitch, you—you orchestrated this whole thing! All of it, everything! You took me away from anyone who'd ever loved me and then you played me like a bloody violin," Harry's voice cracked and he could feel the weak swell of magic under his skin, responding, as always, to his distress, but so much less than it usually was.

Harry pushed for more, using his fury to draw out the very last threads of his magic. No, not his magic, he realized. Lily and Jane's, because if Dumbledore was to be believe he'd never been a wizard at all, just a strange muggle child from some other world who had unintentionally stolen the magic of good witches.

"My whole life has been a lie."

"No Harry," Dumbledore said, his voice a strange mixture of pity and fond pride, "Just the opposite. You were crafted for this life and you have far surpassed my expectations. Ending this conflict before it had even really begun, my boy, you are a wonder. By far my most impressive creation."

"I am going to kill you," Harry said, almost conversationally, fists clenching at his side as he burned through the last of his stolen magic and reached blindly for Excalibur.

His hand found the sword unerringly closing around the cool hilt, as he ducked a wordless binding and threw himself bodily at Dumbledore.

"_Expelliarmus_!"

Harry was vaguely surprised when the sword didn't go flying but rather hummed in his hands, filled with the same purpose he'd felt when he'd been fighting Voldemort, it was almost like it was echoing his righteous fury. And he could tell that Dumbledore was surprised as well, his blue eyes wide and shocked, he raised he wand again twisting his wrist in the start of a complex transfiguration.

And then Harry was on him. Tackling him to the floor before he could get off another spell and shoving the blade home in his chest. A crackle, like a spark of electricity traveled up Harry's arm through the sword and Dumbledore's chest glowed faintly with some internal light before he was just gone, dropping limp against the marble floor like a puppet with his strings cut rather than a puppet master.

And of course it was that scene, the tableau of Harry dragging the blade out from between the ribs of the most respected Light wizard since the Founders time, that the aurors walked in on.

Harry didn't even have time to process what he'd just done.

The first auror to overcome her shock threw a hex his way, but he was already running and the shot went wide. Some calculating part of his brain that wasn't drenched in grief, betrayal, adrenaline and fury noted that there would be no escaping capture here, no fighting his way free of the Ministry. Not with the blood of Albus Dumbledore on his hands and certainly not with the number of bodies scattered throughout the Department's corridors, not the least of which were two more aurors, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Nymphadora Tonks.

So Harry did the only thing he could think of, bracing himself for impact he ran through the Veil, following the whispering voices into the burning darkness and not particularly caring if he made it out the other side.

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><p><strong>AN: <strong>A nice long prologue to start us off!

I'm really looking for feedback about my characterizations and writing style in general and of course I love hearing everyone's thoughts on the plot and progress of the story so please feel free to leave a bunch of long-winded reviews =D.

-Alba


	2. 1: Down in New Orleans

**Don't Call Me Your Saviour**

**Chapter One: Down in New Orleans**

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter or Supernatural.

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><p>Sometimes Harry just hated looking in the mirror. And right now was one of those times.<p>

He hissed in a breath, catching sight of the reflection, and was half way turned around the cubicle of the bathroom, looking for someone who wasn't there when he realized what had happened, and turned back to the mirror, annoyed.

The guy in the mirror looked pretty pissed off himself, matching Harry glare for dark glare.

"Yeah, well screw you too asshole," Harry sighed out, scrubbing a hand over his face.

Whatever magic that had kept him looking like a male version of Jane Potter with Lily Evans' eyes had broken, either with Dumbledore's death or his fun little jog through the Veil.

After four years he still startled sometimes at the sight of the familiar stranger where his reflection used to be. At least it was happening less and less frequently as the years went by. He was just tired, and today was just a bad day for it.

And really, he told himself, beyond exasperated, as he towelled off and dragged a t-shirt over his head, he didn't look _that _different.

Harry was as much of a shrimp as he'd ever been, topping out at five foot six after his last growth spurt, and had the rangy kind of leanness that spoke of poor lifestyle choices and an excellent metabolism. His hair was still dark but nowadays it tended to err more towards brown than black and it bloody well curled. Harry had thought his ragamuffin mop was annoying before but at least it didn't get him called cute and adorable like the bloody curls. Personally Harry didn't see the allure. He'd tried shaving it all off in his last year of high school but he'd just looked ridiculous and after that year he'd decided to make his peace with it, and just hide it under baseball caps and knit toques.

Perhaps the biggest change to his appearance was his eyes. Once a startling clear emerald colour they had faded into a dirty pond-water green that was leaning well into the territory of hazel. The only plus was that he'd discovered he could ditch his glasses. He didn't actually need them at all to see and that had just been a ploy to make him look even more like Jane.

As a consolation prize Harry could admit, it didn't suck.

The rest of his life post-Voldemort—well, that was another story.

He'd come through the Veil in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a cornfield and had had to walk to the nearest town. That had taken him a full day, luckily the folks in Walker's Landing, Iowa had taken pity on his scrawny ass, set him up with a job waiting tables at the local dive and sent him back to high school to get a GED.

It hadn't been fun but it had kept him from spinning out on grief and betrayal, it had given Harry something to focus on, and the skills he'd needed to start looking for his real father.

He hadn't found anything, of course, not with only a name to go on. Every John Winchester he'd approached had failed the paternity tests.

Finally he'd been forced to admit that he was going to need some kind of magical help if he was going to have any hope of tracking down the right John Winchester.

It had taken the better part of the last year to figure out how magic worked in this world, what it could and could not do. What _he_ could and could not do as a grade A, full-fledged, card-carrying member of the muggle community. As it turned out there was plenty.

It had taken him a while but he'd put together a ritual that he was sure would help him find his father, maybe his mom too, if he was lucky. That was why he was here in New Orleans. He was finally closing in on the last of the ingredients he would need to pull this off.

If everything went well he'd be painting the ritual circle on the bathroom floor in no time flat.

Harry tugged on his jeans and gave his hair enough of a rub down that it wasn't immediately apparent he had just jumped out of the shower. Truthfully he wouldn't have even bothered with the shower if he hadn't stunk of the two days on the road and one night spent sleeping on the bus terminal floor. He'd suffered through it to get across the country as fast as humanly possible from where he had been looking into a series of John Winchesters living in Seattle and consulting a woman who claimed to be a witch about the ingredients for his ritual.

He only hoped that the place he'd been sent to was still open for the night.

Somehow, even after waiting this long, the closer he got to the endzone the more impossibly impatient he became. Maybe it was because for once the goal was finally, finally in sight.

And if Harry didn't let himself think of just what he would do when he actually found John Winchester, the right one, well, that was his business.

He grabbed his jacket—wallet and room key still tucked into the pocket along with the address for the shop he needed get to—and slipped outside, locking up behind him and trying to ignore the slight stickiness that clung to the Louisiana air even in October.

The motel parking lot was pretty much empty, the grey-purple light of dusk making the shadows stretch grotesquely long and languid and Harry shivered at the prickle of wariness crawling up his spine, raising the fine hairs at the back of his neck.

Spending the better part of five years of his life with a semi-immortal practitioner of dark magic out for his head—and spending the ten years before that running from Dudley and his thugs—had given Harry better instincts for self-preservation than the average layman and he not-entirely-feigned a sudden chill and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.

He'd started carrying a switchblade and pepper spray around when he'd left Walker's Landing. One too many close calls with assholes and psychos had made him pretty religious about it actually.

He closed his hands around the pepper spray, trying to surreptitiously scout the area. He couldn't see anything, but he knew better then to assume that there was nothing there.

"This is not my night," he muttered to himself, making for the front of the motel and the main road at a jog.

Of course then, when he turned the corner, the guy was on him.

Harry grunted as his back hit asphalt, rolling out of the way as the guy reached for him, and lashing out with a kick.

He'd only meant to take the guys feet out from under him, but there was a snap, a sick crunch, and the guy fell to the ground with his leg all bent out of shape.

He'd put his arms out the brace himself, but late. Slow. And Harry was even more surprised when he didn't scream. Breaking bones hurt. Especially when you fell on them afterwards. This guy—this guy wasn't even fazed.

He turned over reaching with hands that were snarled up like claws, featuring some truly skanky inch long nails and he grabbed at Harry's sneakers.

"Hunter," he gasped out reaching for Harry, "Got you, hunter."

Since the guy didn't seem to be feeling any pain Harry had no problems kicking him in the face.

Harry scrambled to his feet, reaching for his pepper spray, but that went flying when the guy pulled him back down by the leg of his jeans.

"Let me go!" Harry growled, kicking him again, harder, "Let me go you sonofabitch!"

Harry could feel the guys jaw shatter under his foot but he still wasn't budging, clawing up his leg single-mindedly.

"Hunter. Hunter. Hunter," burbled the guy around the mess that was his face, "Gonna eat you up."

"Last chance, get the hell off or I will stab you in the face!" Harry grunted, straining and bucking as the guy got hold of his waist.

It was like the guy couldn't even hear him, couldn't feel him struggling, he just kept mumbling—hunter, hunter hunter.

Then things got extra creepy and the guy bloody well snuffled at his thigh, and Harry could feel the press of his teeth even through the thick denim, hard enough to leave marks. Looking into his glazed over eyes Harry realized that if he wasn't careful the guy would actually make a serious attempt at eating him, even though he wasn't this Hunter person.

"Screw this!"

Harry reached into his pocket and grabbed the knife, flicked the blade open and without thinking too carefully about what he was doing dug it up to the hilt in the guy's temple.

It slid in easy and Harry felt a bit of some kind of fluid ooze over his hands but the guy just kept coming and Harry, Harry started to get scared.

"Smell you, hunter. Smell you."

Harry didn't know what this guy was but he wasn't human, that much was for certain. Nothing human could take a knife to the temple and not flinch, to just keep coming, and to keep talking about it. Adrenaline pounded through him, clenching in his stomach when he felt those claw-like nails against his bare skin.

The thing, whatever it was, had his shirt rucked up and was preparing to make another go at the whole eating thing by the looks of it.

With a surge of panic infused strength he got a knee up between himself and his attacker and managed to roll them, tearing himself away and losing a shoe and a piece of shirt in the process.

Harry staggered to his feet skinning his hands as he got out of arms reach or the thing and backed up, watching it get up on its feet, settling its broken leg underneath it like it was nothing. It staggered forward reaching for him and Harry took another quick two steps back circling it.

He didn't know what to do. He didn't have any more weapons and nothing seemed to do the job of hurting it any way. He hated to admit it but his best option might just be to run and hope that no one else ran into it before he figured something out.

"Can't hide, hunter. Smell you here. Smell you everywhere. Find you. Eat you. Hunter, hunter hunter hunter."

A few of its teeth and what looked like rotting flesh of the gums dribbled out of its mouth down the front of its, surprisingly dapper if incredibly filthy, tuxedo.

"That is just gross," Harry grimaced.

Just then a car came tearing around the corner and, without slowing, barreled into the guy at top speed, leaving him a broken pile of mushy flesh wrapped around shattered, ruined bone. Harry thought he might actually be sick at the sound of it.

And the guy, the thing, it just kept trying to move.

The car screeched to a sudden halt in the middle of the parking lot and the driver stalked out, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that he'd just turned something that was at least shaped like a person into a floundering meat-sack.

"Get away from that, kid," he barked.

Uncertainly Harry moved another few paces away from what was left of his unnaturally durable assailant, and the driver, well, he lit a bloody Molotov cocktail and without hesitating threw it down on the remains, which went up in flames pretty much instantly, filling the parking lot with a lot of foul-smelling black smoke.

Harry skedaddled a few more steps back trying to block out the smell with the sleeve of his jacket, and thinking vaguely that he'd need another ten showers after this.

"You alright kid?"

"Bloody brilliant," Harry answered sarcastically, gagging a bit on the bile crawling fiery up his throat, "What was that thing?"

"Nothing you need to worry about."

"That—thing attacked and tried to eat me. I stabbed it in the head and it didn't even flinch, I'd say that is something to worry about, wouldn't you?"

The guy turned to face him and Harry was struck by how young he was. He couldn't be too much older than Harry but he carried himself with the air of someone who knew what he was doing and it made him look—bigger. But he was just a tall, light-haired, grinning, twenty-something dressed in worn jeans and a button down with the sleeves rolled up.

He turned that grin on Harry, clapped him on the shoulder, rough but friendly, and led him further away from the fiery mess.

"Look kid, go back to your room, or hell go to a bar, get dead drunk find yourself a pretty piece for the night and pretend this was all a dream. You'll be happier for it."

Harry shrugged out of his grip and glared at him.

"Look you know what that thing was right? You know it wasn't—human, wasn't natural?"

That got him nothing but rolled eyes and an exasperated sigh, "Yeah, so what?"

"So, how likely is it that another one of those things is lurking about trying to eat me?" Harry demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Not likely, kid. Now scram."

"This is about the least pleasant rescue of all time," Harry felt compelled to point out.

"Yeah well, tough luck, nice wasn't in the job description and I'm not big on overachieving," the guy said turning back to the mess on the pavement with a grimace of his own.

If running unfeeling, barely killable somethings down with gorgeous classic black muscle cars and then setting them on fire _was _in the job description Harry could see how niceness might not have made the cut.

"Er—what are you gonna do about the, uh, leftover bits."

"Nothing," said the guy, "There won't be anything left by the time the fire's burnt out except for a funky smelling black smear, and hey this place is skanky enough that no one came running when I lit the sonofabitch on fire so I don't think anyone'll notice."

"Great," said Harry after a moment.

"Look kid are you gonna go inside or am I gonna have to drag your ass there? Streets ain't safe. Here there be monsters. Take the damn hint!"

"Fine, fine," Harry said, "Don't get your knickers in a knot I'm going back to my room."

And he turned to do just that, even though a part of him, a slightly creepy, morbid part, wanted to watch the remains turn to goo or whatever, if only just to make sure the thing was really dead.

The young guy watched him walk all the way up to his door and fish out his room key before getting back into his car.

The door clicked open and the car did a U-turn in the parking lot.

"Hey!" Harry called out at the last minute.

"What now kid?" grumbled the guy, slowing to talk to him out the driver's side window.

"Thanks for saving my ass."

That earned him what looked like it might have been a laugh or a head shake or something. Dusk had started to turn firmly into darkness by this time and the light of the dwindling pyre wasn't enough for Harry to make out his exact expression, but he was under the impression the guy thought he was weird and kind of funny.

"You're welcome," he said, waving, "I mean it kid, inside til sunup or I'll hunt your ass down."

And then he was driving away, and Harry took his advice and locked himself back into his motel room peeling off his jacket and making for the shower with a little huff of frustration.

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><p><strong>AN:<strong> Thanks to everyone who reviewed, alerted and faved, glad you guys are liking it! Hopefully nobody minds that I skated over a few of the formative years there and got right to the goodies!

As always suggestions about areas to improve (especially characterizations), ideas for plot, comments, questions and other forms of reviews are more than welcome! So put a few words in the pretty box below and make my day!

-Alba


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